In­dia ar­rests 11 for al­legedly smug­g­lig ba­bies in con­tain­ers

In­dian Po­lice have ar­rested 11 peo­ple for al­legedly smug­gling ba­bies out of a health clinic us­ing bis­cuit con­tain­ers and selling the in­fants to child­less cou­ples.

A se­nior of­fi­cial from Crime In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment (CID) said Po­lice found two ba­bies hid­den in card­board boxes in a med­i­cal store­room dur­ing a raid on Monday in Baduria, West Ben­gal. The owner, mid­wives and other staff were ar­rested, along with court clerks sus­pected of mak­ing fake doc­u­men­ta­tion for the chil­dren and the head of a char­ity which ran the adop­tion cen­tre.

Po­lice said ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­di­cated that un­mar­ried girls and women who vis­ited the clinic for an abor­tion were per­suaded by staff to give birth and sell their ba­bies. Lo­cal news re­ports said the moth­ers were given 300,000 ru­pees (F$9153) for a boy and 100,000 ru­pees (F$3102) for a girl. Ba­bies were also stolen from women who de­liv­ered at the clinic, but who were told by staff that their chil­dren were still­born. The ba­bies, mostly new­borns, were then smug­gled in car­tons used to store bis­cuits, and taken by road to an adop­tion cen­tre 25 kilo­me­tres away in Mach­landa­pur, where they were sold on to child­less cou­ples.

“It was a well or­gan­ised syn­di­cate, in­cor­po­rat­ing all kinds of help­ing hands needed for the smug­gling net­work,” said an­other CID of­fi­cial, who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied. The CID of­fi­cer said more ar­rests were likely in the com­ing days.

South Asia is one of the fastest­grow­ing re­gions for hu­man traf­fick­ing in the world. Re­ports of hu­man traf­fick­ing in In­dia in­creased by 25 per cent in 2015 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.